You could just Google Bible Slavery apologetics and find out some of this stuff for yourself but I'll start a thread about it later.

I have, it's all bs. Your arguments so far are nothing new. It's the same old garbage said a hundred times regurgitated from creationists and apologists who were no more right the first time they said it than you are when you repeat it. It's a shame you never actually read any of those atheist books that you lied about reading initially.

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

it's grand fun to watch coink run to Ehrman when convenient. So, coink do you believe everything else Ehrman says about your religion?

and I love the attempts to make belive that one can hang himself, die, and then burst his guts out and die again. one doesn't fall "headlong" if one drops off like rotten fruit from a tree. Nice cribbing from AiG, but it still fails.

Ehrman has a heck of a lot more to say about Judas that the two accounts already mentioned.

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Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." -- Charlie Chaplin

So has God become more sophisticated and civilized? Always at the same rate as human society? How convenient. The unchanging God of absolute morals, who shifts his views to fit the SPAG of his followers.

I guess he has if you look at as being more sophisticated and civilized.

Well, to me anyways, "sophisticated" and "civilized" are opposite of "primitive" and "uncivilized", which, according to you, are adjectives that could be used to describe God's punishment shown in the Bible, and, also according to you, "that's the way it was done." Your emphasis on "was" implies that it is no longer this way, and that it is different now.

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God set apart Israel for a reason, he had them obey dietary laws and the way they dressed and their government was a theocracy. Some of the laws became null and void once they stopped wandering in the desert

Show me the verses where it says these laws are null and void, and which ones they are.

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and established a nation they were only to set themselves apart from the heathen nations and not to intermingle. Then when they became a nation and demanded a King they became a democracy, the temple cleanliness laws were still to be obeyed such as diet and such because of temple purity.

Where does it say this in the Bible?

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The priests sacrificed animals on the altar for the sins of the people, something that started with Abraham a Chaldean Jew. This was a picture or a promise of the messiah that would come and present a final sacrifice for the people. Every sacrifice for sin in the old testament was foreshadowing what was to come. The people had to stay pure and sacrifice once a year. The OT prophecies Isa 53 Psalm 22 and many others portrayed a suffering servant who would die for the sins of the people.

How does "destroying living things for no purpose other than to appease a bloodthirsty God" translate into "pure"?

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Jesus in the NT was sinless and perfect and became that sacrifice.

How do you KNOW this? How can you know that Jesus never once sinned? Reminder: the Bible is not evidence of the truth of the claims of the Bible.

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Once he did that he fulfilled the OT law regarding sin sacrifice and the OT Jewish laws for temple purity diet clothing etc were unnecessary because there would be no more animals sacrificed since He was the sacrificial Lamb.

And there would be no need to save money, or take thought for the next day, or raise your children, because Jesus said the end was near. I notice you don't mention that.

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The Jews haven't had animal sacrifice in 2000 years because when Jesus died he said it is finished "promise fulfilled"

LOL, except that the Jews think that Jesus was not the Messiah.

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and the curtain of the Holy of Holies was ripped in two making it impossible to perform sacrifices there.

Or because the Romans destroyedthe temple in 70AD and that was the only place where they were permitted to have animal sacrifices. It has nothing to do with Jesus.

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People in the new covenant or promise that God promised in the OT when the old covenant was broken are now judged as individuals. I can't bring sin offerings for my sons and daughter they have to come to God themselves and make that commitment.

And what happens to your children if they don't? FIRE!!!!!!!

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God hasn't changed his morals He has changed the methods and practices of how he deals with people.

Wow trying to be slick there. If the morals have not changed, why change the methods of dealing with people? WHATS THE POINT!?? Why is slavery OK in the BIBLICAL HOLY LAND but not in the USA?

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The Jews had a moral law in the OT but added all kinds of other laws and traditions that made it impossible for outsiders to become part of God's family.

Oh, so at least SOME of the stuff in the OT was just made up by power hungry and racially exclusive humans, but the rest is the infallible word of God, and YOU know which is which? Weren't the Jews in the OT doing what God told them to do? He ordered them to kill all outsiders, and rape their girls, and gave the thumbs up to slavery.

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Jesus came to set things straight and establish the new covenant Jeremiah 31:31-34 as promised. Today Christianity has done the same thing. God clearly wanted the Jews to become a great nation

Which is of course why he sent Adolf Hitler to help them on their path to becoming a great nation.

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Genesis 18:18 and all the world to come to know him through them.

Yet there are quite a few people living today that have never heard of Christianity. Think of all of the remote islands in the pacific, and isolated tribes in the Congo. They haven't "come to know" Jesus at all. Quite frankly, they are probably better off if they don't.

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They made Judaism and exclusive club.

No, God always had it that way! You either worship me or die! What could be more exclusive than that?

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Today many Christian denominations have added rules traditions and laws that need to be followed in order to be in God's family but that is not how God intended it.

but of course you know exactly how God intended it, because you musy be a TrueChristiantm. After all, what the hell would Church Officials know about religious doctrine.

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Genesis15:6 And he [Abraham] believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

And many an atheist thinks that Abraham, the father figure of three violent faiths, is a sick bastard for being willing to kill his son, just "Cuz God said so". I would further submit that his single act of willingness to do horrible violence without question demonstrates perfectly what is so barbaric and ridiculous about faith. If one of the hero figures of your religion is a guy who is willing to brutally murder his own child, then I submit that your religion is fucked up. Limitless ways that God could choose to test Abraham's faith, but no, God has to go for as much emotional and physical suffering as possible in every situation. According to the story, God himself ends up sacrificing his own son[1]Only by violence and murder and death can your God be made happy.

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Abraham was saved by faith in God alone the sacrifice for sin that messiah would bring.

Saved from what? From following God's orders to kill his son? Look, if somebody kidnapped you and your child, and said "Kill your kid or else!" and you said "ok" and, just as you were about to do it, the kidnapper said "sike! Just wanted to see if you would do it or not, I love my ego trips", you would NOT that that person was the most awesome and kind and gracious person EVER, and you surely wouldn't have considered them your savior.

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Christians are saved by faith in God alone through Christ and the sacrifice he made.

Although considering that JC was in on the plan, and was aware that he would be resurrected and share rule of the Cosmos forever, while possessed of infinite power, one might consider whether this is really a "sacrifice". I think a sacrifice implies that the person sacrificing themselves is somehow worse off.

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"A resurrected person who is also the son of a virgin could still be talking nonsense. There's no logic that says he must be right. " Christopher Hitchens

It doesn't matter, he does heal some and not others. God saves some and not others as well. I don't know why, I don't know why he doesn't save everyone but I've met some Atheists who say they wouldn't become Christians even if they knew Christianity is true.

No. The point of the WWGHA arguments is that god doesn't heal anyone. If amputees are not healed, then cancer victims are not healed.

See, it works like this. If the answer to a prayer is unambiguous, such that any reasonable man can see the results, then the answer to the prayer is always "no." It's only when the answer is ambiguous that the answer is sometimes "yes," and sometimes "no."

As for your arguments about the Bible, at least come into the late 20th Century. There is no evidence to support the "big" events of the Bible. For example, there is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus. No Exodus, no Moses. No Moses, no chosen people. No chosen people, no savior. No Jesus, no salvation, no resurrection, no god.

Ok, let's lok at the rest of this. I guess Velkyn already did the first one (thanks Velks) so that leaves me with looking at the rest.

The first site is "In His Steps Ministries"........this is going to hurt.

The site lists several Christian claims which it claims it will try to prove.

Proof of Jesus

Here's another quote from their intro "There is historical, archaeological, and the study of logical reasoning that disproves that the Bible just a book of myths of legends. "

It is never a good sign when a site promising evidence says something like that. But that doesn't matter because we're finally going to get a look at all of that proof that we've all been waiting for so long. I'm getting special shivers in my "god-place" just thinking about it. So I start to read this revolutionary information and.............

They just quote Josephus and Tacitus......literally that's it. They spend six fucking paragraphs talking about how they have this great evidence and fluffing it up only to quote evidence that you can find to be bullshit from a 10-second web search. Now I'm starting to understand why they put this on their homepage: "Here is the key?are you searching for truth or loopholes. You can always find the loopholes. "

In other words, if you find anything with this information, you weren't actually looking for truth. Ugh, let's move on. I don't think I need to mention why Josehpus and Tacitus suck. Even if they didn't, they have only a small handful of people that might have mentioned Jesus in passing in some of their writings, and that is really the only thing that they offer as evidence for his birth.

Proof of the Crucifixion

Uh-huh "Of course, the Bible more than verifies the truth of Jesus' claims, but an atheist, agnostic, or new spiritual seeker may not believe the Bible is true.", another promising start.

The first section is a medical evaluation of what Jesus went through when he was crucified and I have to admit it puzzles me. It goes through a detailed description of the process of Crucifixion and all of the things that Jesus would have suffered through, but it goes on for about fifteen paragraphs and I really can't imagine what it's actually trying to prove. The best I can figure is that they're trying to go "See how Jesus suffered! How can you not believe in him after all he did for you!". Which admittedly is probably much closer to a rational argument than Dink has made so far.

I love the ending however. "This is an edited description given by Dr. C. Truman Davis is an Ophthalmologist. Some will argue that he is just an eye doctor. Ophthalmologists (not Opticians) are required to go through the same medical training as a physician."

They know it's so ridiculous that they're actually pre-emptively trying to cover their asses.

Then there's another medical report of what the Crucifixion was like for Jesus (yeah I know, two of them WTF?) but for this one I think I get what it's trying to do. This is basically making the claim that Jesus' death can be proven because he was sacrificing himself and it shows his greatness that he did it willingly.......

Yeah, I know guys. I read that too. What can I say except, they're Christians?

There are some historical sources that they list, so let's see what those are.

Fucking Tacitus and Josephus again? They're like the only two historical figures Christians know that isn't in the bible.

Lucian of Samosta, who lived in the second century. Thus making his account useless.

The Jewish Talmud. Written in 200 AD (or thereabouts).

Let's see Justin Martyr, an early christian apologist who once talked about a letter written to Pius in 150 AD. Yes, you actually read that right. They cite a second century apologist who once wrote a letter addressed to the Roman Emperor a hundred years or so after Jesus died which mentioned the crucifixion as evidence that it actually happened.

Apparently Justin also went on to talk about many other things Jesus had done. And I think the next part really needs to be quoted so that you can appreciate it as I do.

"Justin must have assumed that this record still existed in the official Roman archives and that Antoninus Pius could verify the facts easily. Justin’s whole purpose in writing his letter was to obtain mercy from the highest official in the known world, thus sparing the Christian community a persecution which was becoming so commonplace. It is unlikely that Justin would ask a Roman Emperor to check a document if he did not feel extremely confident that the document existed. Otherwise, he would be foolishly putting his own life and reputation at risk.

There is currently not one original copy of the Acts of Pilate. It also appears the Acts of Pilate had some mean things to say about Christians, so later in time copies started being circulated that were edited. Even though there is no manuscript, again there had to have been something that said what Justin was quoting or he would have no defense."

This is what I've been dealing with, people.

The last piece of evidence (ugh, calling it that nearly caused blood to shoot out my nose) is about a man named Tertullian who also wrote a letter to some Roman officials that talked about Jesus. HA!BULLETPROOF!TAKE THAT ATHEISTS!

I'd also like to quote the end of this as well.

"It should be noted that Christianity is a religion based upon relationship, not knowledge. It is a religion of faith not logic. The information provided is to help answer questions, but ultimately you must believe in the gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ because you believe in the claims of Jesus that we are sinners and we need a savior."

No comment needed.

How much more of this crap do I need to sift through. I keep hoping that there's at least one intelligent thought in here somewhere.

Proof of the Resurection (AKA I can't believe they actually think this happened, Ha, ha Losers!!)

First though a clarification. This part here actually explains those idiotic medical reports from the last section that I couldn't understand the point of. Apparently (get this) they were supposed to be evidence that the Crucifixion would have killed Jesus, and evidene that he would have suffered in the process. Yeah, they spent about thirty paragraphs in total from two different doctors just to prove that being crucified is both lethal AND painful.

There are no words.

So let's look at their evidence.

Fucking Josephus again? Ugh, I'll pass on that part.

They try to address the lack of historical evidence. Which after four paragraphs of bullshit basically amounts to blaming a Jewish conspiracy (I'm not kidding) to prevent people from turning to Jesus as their saviour. Why am I not surprised that there just HAD to be a jewish conspiracy in there somewhere.

The next point they bring up is the standard one of if it wasn't true, why didn't anyone at the time disprove it, followed by the "why would people die for their faith if it wasn't true" schtick. It's dull and boring and with no evidence or original thought so let's move on.

The next section isn't really relevant. It basically addresses the other Christian views of the resurection (that it was metaphor/myth and other variations) basically they try to justify that the literal interpetation is true. So basically a OneTrueChristian claim made to other Christians.

That's actually the rest of that section. It just goes through all of the alternate Christian theories about the resurection and tries to debunk them. It actually doesn't provide any evidence. Just spends a LOT of pages debunking everyone else.

Fuck, I've still got three more to go and my brain is already threatening to revolt. I'll get back to this in a bit. You guys owe me for this.

Actually this is thankfully short. Mostly because there's not much in the way of content. Most of it is links to other sites.

However there is this disclaimed at the bottom that I find interesting.

Disclaimer-In His Steps Ministries does not endorse or agree with some of the doctrinal beliefs or teachings of sites that are recommended throughout our website. These sites are only given as additional resources that have some items that we find of value. We acknowledge that as in every other religion or belief system, there are individuals or organizations in Christianity that are 'flakey', 'off base', claim facts that are fiction, etc. Use wisdom and the intelligence that God has given you, even those of you who do not believe there is a God.

In other words they put this stuff up as evidence but don't actually promise that it proves anything. Well at least this was short.

Validity of the Bible

Ok, I'm calling bullshit right off the bat.

"Many spiritual seekers wonder why there is not more historical evidence to verify the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. Here is something to consider. There is no need for more evidence because the Holy Bible itself is historical evidence. he Old Testament has over 60 prophecies about Jesus that were fulfilled. The Bible has the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that document Jesus' life. The balance of the New Testament has references to Jesus. There are 66 books of the Bible. Almost every single book of the Bible has either a prophecy about Jesus or verses that point to the Gospel message. There are over 24,600 manuscripts of the New Testament and over 24,000 original manuscripts of portions of the New Testament.

Why would there need to be more historical evidence?"

I can see that at no point does this section actually address the fact that the bible cannot be used to prove itself because it is the book that is making the claim to be proven. Which pretty much instantly invalidates the rest of this section. But let's see what it hits me with.

The first bit asks "can the bible be trusted?" It argues that some peopel would say that the bible is biased because it was written by Christians and thus can't be trusted. It argues that many history books and autobiographies are written by people with biases but we still trust them.

I would just like to interject something as an aside here. You see what I wrote up there. Those three sentences. This fucking site took four cock-guzzling paragraphs just to say that. The content on this site is so damn padded just so that it can look like it's saying more than it fucking is.

Ok, rant over.

Essentially it completely overlooks the fact that the reason we don't trust the bible is because it's wrong about even the most basic information and not because it's written by people with a bias (though that doesn't help).

Here's how this part ends.

"There is something that is unique about the Bible compared to any autobiography, biography, or history book - the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God. This means it was God breathed. The authors of the Bible wrote what God had them to write. Yes, they wrote with their style of writing, but the accuracy of what they wrote was based upon being inspired by God. We know, as a spiritual seeker you may not believe this. That is ok. We are going to provide more evidence for the Validity of the Bible."

So the bible is valid because it was written by god. And we know this because the bible says that it is.........sigh.

The next part tries to make take the argument that the bible manuscripts we have aren't accurate. It says that to determine the accuracy we must compare it to other books at the time. It compares the bible with other manuscripts based on how many original copies there are and the time span that they were created in relation to their being placed in a book. And it's total bullshit.

I was going to quote Historicity's post from before ( a very excellent post,might I add) where Badger made the same claim about there being over 24,000 copies of the bible, but there's no point. The numbers in this chart don't even add up now that I look at it. Going by this chart the new testament was made into a book only twenty five years after it was authored which is ridiculous. There's nothing more that needs to be said here.

It then goes on to list how science is proving the bible to be accurate more and more each day. Naturally with no examples. It then states how the prophecies of the bible are being fulfilled. Again with no examples.

It ends by pointing out that Jesus has a large section devoted to him in the Encyclopedia Brittannica and that The Readers Digest Book of Facts lists Jesus' existence as a fact.

Seriously this is the argument it ends on. I keep trying to scream but for some reason the sounds won't come out.

I won't bother with the last section of the site now that I look at it. It's just asking the C.S Lewis question of whether Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. There's nothing in there worth analyzing.

Which means that this was it people. This was Dinks big evidence. Nothing, literally nothing. There was nothing here for me to work with. Not one single thing said on this site would even cause the person reading it to register a blip on a cat scan.

I would do the last site but I wouldn't even know where to start. It's basically like a Christian news site that focuses on all sorts of bible stuff. There's really no focused theme for me to look at. It doesn't make any claims it's just reporting things. So I guess I'm done. It's late, I'm tired and my brain is currently curled up in one corner of my skull weaping uncontrollably from the abuse that it's taken tonight.

Seriously, those sites of Dinks are bad even by Christian standards. They're so vacant and padded. They say almost nothing of any substance. They have no arguments of any kind, really. They just.....talk and talk. Answers in Genesis is a FAR better site if you want to hear Christian arguments. Dink if this is the best you can manage then I can understand why you don't respond to me or Aaron. You clearly have nothing to work with in regards to your extremely limited knowledge of Christianity, logic, reason, or the bible. Take my advice, stop while trying to make arguments here. Go back home, read some real books, spend some time educating yourself and actually thinking about what you believe and why. Then come back and have a go at it. We'll still be here waiting and then maybe you'll be able to hold your own.

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

I heard one of my fairly intelligent students tell another one that, "There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for Alexander the Great." I wanted to brain myself with a large rock.

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When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Even when I was religious I was thoroughly confused and disappointed what people said things like this. Jesus H never talked to me. Sometimes I thought I perceived omens and messages and signs, but deep down, I knew it was wishful thinking. God was distant and aloof. I didn't feel any presence.

I have experienced answered prayer and known his presence in ways I can't explain. But if I felt the Bible was untrue and Christianity was false I would walk away and never look back.

That's what happened to me. I read the Old Testament. It was pretty obvious to me it was a collection of myths, no different than the greeks and altogether unbelievable. In it yhwh is a horrible, capricious and very human character. I found it impossible to believe this was the loving, merciful god I was told about. Without the OT, the NT has no basis. The rug was pulled out from under my faith. And I am glad for it.

Indeed. I commend you for your effort in going through that. It was too painful for me to endure to write a significant rebuttal. You know, when things like that happen, I almost feel betrayed. Here I am, perfectly willing to give any evidence its due consideration, and hoping to be challenged, and be presented with something new, intriguing, and revolutionary. Then we are offered garbage like that.

It's kind of like someone inviting you over for dinner, wanting to show off their culinary skills, only when the dish is put on the table, it's rotting coleslaw. Or having a car dealer tell you about this wonderful car they have and can offer you cheap, then he presents you with a rusted out Dodge Omni. What really scares me, though, is the volume of people who apparently read such terrible arguments and say "You know what? They're RIGHT! OF COURSE! Hallelujah, praise the Lord!". THAT is scary.

While such arguments might be really effective for intellectual giants like Sarah Palin, they really are not appropriate for a serious discussion.

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"A resurrected person who is also the son of a virgin could still be talking nonsense. There's no logic that says he must be right. " Christopher Hitchens

Indeed. I commend you for your effort in going through that. It was too painful for me to endure to write a significant rebuttal. You know, when things like that happen, I almost feel betrayed. Here I am, perfectly willing to give any evidence its due consideration, and hoping to be challenged, and be presented with something new, intriguing, and revolutionary. Then we are offered garbage like that.

It's kind of like someone inviting you over for dinner, wanting to show off their culinary skills, only when the dish is put on the table, it's rotting coleslaw. Or having a car dealer tell you about this wonderful car they have and can offer you cheap, then he presents you with a rusted out Dodge Omni. What really scares me, though, is the volume of people who apparently read such terrible arguments and say "You know what? They're RIGHT! OF COURSE! Hallelujah, praise the Lord!". THAT is scary.

While such arguments might be really effective for intellectual giants like Sarah Palin, they really are not appropriate for a serious discussion.

I agree, fortunately now that my brains stopped crying and is no longer threatening to secede from the rest of my body it actually felt kind of good to go through it and analyze it like that in thread. I used to do that a lot more once upon a time. I think I stopped because I just no longer had the time to go at it that in-depth.

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

Hey everybody I just googled History and the Bible and read a few links. But hey I hear Answers in Genesis has some good arguments. I was going to use that one but someone already mentioned it and I thought they would just shoot it down. My favorites are Greg Koukl, Frank Turek, Norm Geisler, and William Lane Craig but rather than just link to their individual sited and articles I'd rather just put stuff in my own words unless I think they can say it briefly and succinctly. I haven't argued these points and I'm not going to regroup and read books and come back. I haven't even started arguing any points really. I know what I want to say, I have read some Hitchens, Dawkins and Erhman, I've listened to debates with all of them and Sam Harris and others and have read up on Stephen Hawking. I love Hitchens, and Erhman and strongly dislike Dawkins. but I guess I'll abandon this thread and move on to one of the other subjects. I want to keep it all under one roof. It's difficult enough to keep up on this thread. I'm probably not going to answer every question I'm asked either. If the thread is about slavery I'm going to talk about slavery and if people bring up other topics I'll just keep pushing on with the subject at hand. Alzael said he'd heard it all before anyway so it's kind of a waste of time. If he's already dismissed my arguments before I make them it's pretty certain he's not going to concede anything. I will say there are a few atheists here who seem reasonable and logical and I'd love to continue talking to you.I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to start the other threads. I work a full time job mon-fri 730pm to 330am I have 3 kids 11, 9, and 8 and I am an artist on the side so it's difficult to devote a lot of time to this. I've done this for years just not here. I don't see what the big hurry is seeing this site isn't going anywhere. I'm off on the weekends so I'll start some stuff tonight after the kids go to bed.If anyone wants me to answer specific questions that I didn't get to on this thread I apologize I was going to go through page by page and answer some of them but 2 subjects keeping popping up and I suppose I need to discuss them. PM me if you want to drift and maybe we can work it in or I can join another thread on the topic.

I like talking about this stuff, I want to learn how to communicate better and that is my goal to do it in a kind way if possible.

I'm probably not going to answer every question I'm asked either. If the thread is about slavery I'm going to talk about slavery and if people bring up other topics I'll just keep pushing on with the subject at hand.

In other words you're trying to excuse yourself from having to answer to the claims you've made so far. And are trying to do so for the claims you'll make in the future as well. Typical.

Alzael said he'd heard it all before anyway so it's kind of a waste of time. If he's already dismissed my arguments before I make them it's pretty certain he's not going to concede anything.

That's because I've heard all of your arguments before. Everyone here has. It's not a matter of dismissing the arguments before you make them. It's a matter of you presenting arguments that were proven wrong and dismissed long ago.

Those sites that you listed had arguments that were pathetic. And it's not even a theist thing. I've seen theists make better arguments a lot better than that. They were listing Tacitus and Josephus for crying out loud. Those two have been well-known fakes for at least a decade or two. You could have checked wikipedia and found that out. It's all over the place. I'm three days short of thirty and you're using arguments that were proven wrong when I was a child. Don't blame me for dismissing your arguments, they came pre-packaged for dismissal.

As a final note I would like to point something out. Your statement is a lie, and one I take offense at. I spent over two hours last night going over that unfilterd shit you threw out over the forum. And I pointed out it's failings piece by piece, which is far more than you have bothered to do with ANY piece of evidence presented by anyone else about anything to date. Those links that you jokingly touted as "scientific" evidence was not dismissed in anyway. It was rebutted. What you are attempting to do now is a dismissal. A dismissal of all the work I've put into this back and forth so far. Whether it's the time I spent on the link, or the time I spent pointing out the flaws in your views on slavery, you've simply dismissed all of that out of hand. Where exactly have I outright dismissed your arguments?

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

That still doesn't justify your statement and the implications made in it. You implied that I had outright dismissed all of your arguments. Instead the only example you show is a part where I said that a question you made that was entirely irrelevant to the issue being talked about was irrelevant. Interesting viewpoint.

But ok, I'll give you this one and concede that such a statement could have potentially been considered a dismissal. Do you then agree that your implication that I had dismissed everything you said was made in error?

And while we're on that subject should we talk about your dismissals of other peoples points/questions? Or the ones that you outright refused to respond to (made by several members so far)? Because I'm pretty sure that your list is WAY longer. And don't bother trying to play the "no time" card. You've already admitted that you're doing it at least partly on purpose, so that ship has sailed.

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

That still doesn't justify your statement and the implications made in it. You implied that I had outright dismissed all of your arguments. Instead the only example you show is a part where I said that a question you made that was entirely irrelevant to the issue being talked about was irrelevant. Interesting viewpoint.

But ok, I'll give you this one and concede that such a statement could have potentially been considered a dismissal. Do you then agree that your implication that I had dismissed everything you said was made in error?

I said.

If he's already dismissed my arguments before I make them it's pretty certain he's not going to concede anything.

And while we're on that subject should we talk about your dismissals of other peoples points/questions? Or the ones that you outright refused to respond to (made by several members so far)? Because I'm pretty sure that your list is WAY longer. And don't bother trying to play the "no time" card. You've already admitted that you're doing it at least partly on purpose, so that ship has sailed.

Listen I haven't refused anything. If anyone wants to bring up points again I'll answer them, I'm even going to use some of these posts in the other threads and I asked people to PM me if it was off topic and I'd join another debate thread and talk about it there.

I have a few questions "rhetorical" What's the big hurry here? I'll probably discuss every topic mentioned in this thread and then some in the future. Is this forum going to disappear tomorrow or something? Is it possible that I would like to think things through rather than coming up with a knee jerk response to hush people? I'm developing the Slavery thread on my word processor, I want to make it bulletproof if possible. I posted 3 links to the historical Bible stuff to pacify you and you had a victory parade like you had won a great war when they turned up lame.

I'm not going to just be emotional and post I'm trying to think it through.

I have read some Hitchens, Dawkins and Erhman, I've listened to debates with all of them and Sam Harris and others and have read up on Stephen Hawking.I love Hitchens, and Erhman and strongly dislike Dawkins.

Wow. That's interesting. I always thoughts Hitchen's would be less objectionable.

Alzael said he'd heard it all before anyway so it's kind of a waste of time.

Lol. You can say this with any argument about religion. Most of the theological arguments have been around for a long time. I would not worry about his claim. If he's "heard it all before" and he feels like it, he will provide time honoured responses.

"i had learn to focus i what i could do rather what i couldn't do", Rick Hansen when asked about getting a disabling spinal cord injury at 15. He continues to raise money for spinal cord research and inspire peoople to "make a difference". He doesnt preach any religion.

Listen I haven't refused anything. If anyone wants to bring up points again I'll answer them, I'm even going to use some of these posts in the other threads and I asked people to PM me if it was off topic and I'd join another debate thread and talk about it there.

Funny, because I remember what you said the last time that you were here. Let's refresh our memories with one of the last posts from your previous stay here, before your rather long leave of abscence.

I'm going to take my time though. I'm about to log off for a while because I have a life.

I hope to continue this discussion and others later.

That time too, you left a long list of unanswered or unresponded to questions or points. That time too you said that you had to take the time to process them. That was a little under a year ago that you took off like that. Did it really take you that long to process all of those.

You're even behaving in the exact same way. You started with an unsubstantiated statement of opinion. In fact I note that you asked a lot of the same questions then that you're asking now. Questions that were answerd by the people here, by the way. I also note that you dodged and avoided a lot of the same issues when they came up. Such as the question that Aaron has been asking about the babies. That came up in the previous thread. You then moved onto blanket claims about atheists. Then after you got shot down you started ignoring issues and making claims about not having time and how you wanted to take some time to think.

Like I said nothing new. You're even using the same arguments as last time. Or trying to at least.

Alzael, perhaps I'm missing something but when a typical theist comes here, they are confronted with several posts per thread.

The posts in the thread are walls of text.

I think, its unrealistic to expect any human with a life to reply to all those texts. Certainly, if I were in his place and right now I don't have a life, I'd only respond to a few of them.

I was just trying to respond to one of these posts, Velkyn's. A careful response would take far too much time.

Now to be far, perhaps walls of text begat walls of text; i.e., the OPs may not have been short either.

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"i had learn to focus i what i could do rather what i couldn't do", Rick Hansen when asked about getting a disabling spinal cord injury at 15. He continues to raise money for spinal cord research and inspire peoople to "make a difference". He doesnt preach any religion.

Alzael, perhaps I'm missing something but when a typical theist comes here, they are confronted with several posts per thread.

You are missing something, several somethings actually.

The first being that this is a clear pattern of behaviour of him. As I pointed out, he did this last time as well. Used that exact same excuse to avoid having to answer anything before he took off after making all of his spurious claims. The same questions that were asked then are being asked now, and he's still claiming that he needs time to think up an answer to them.

The second thing being that aside from the slavery thing he's not actually being asked to respond to much. Aarons question, for example, which has been repeated about three times so far; was just a simple yes or no question. There's no real excuse for not getting to it when asked repeatedly over several pages unless he just didn't want to answer for his claims. Which he clearly doesn't.

The third thing is that issues like the slavery thing were brought up back on the second page of this thread. He's been outright dodging it for the last four pages. It's not like this is something that just came up. He's been failing to respond to his own claims on this and other issues for days. He's gone on to make further claims in the meantime, however. So apparently he does have time to make new claims, but not enough time to answer for his old ones. Hell look at his last five posts. His last five posts were all spent making excuses for why he hasn't responded to the issues he himself has raised. Instead of, you know, responding to the issues that were raised.

The fourth is that he's outright stated that he's purposefully not answering certain things. Those "things" seem to be the exact things that are holding him to account for his own words. Like the slavery issue, which he keeps saying that he's going to start another thread on. Which is pointless since the issue is relevant to what he's said in this thread. He was the one who was defending slavery in the first place as being more or less ok. It's only once he got called on the claim that it became irrelevant to the conversation and needed it's own thread. Which was about three of four days ago.

So no, in his case I don't buy "no time" as an excuse.

Edit: One important thing that I forgot to mention. One of the main reasons that I generally don't buy it when a theist like Dink tries to claim a lack of time is because they were never trying to engage in an honest discussion from the beginning. If I actually thought for a second that Dink actually intended to have a reasonable discussion here I would have no problem with letting him take his time to formulate a well-thought out response. But he started out making unsupported claims, disengenuous and rather condescending comments, lies, and ignoring points that showed him wrong.

He's just messing around and wasting everyones time.

« Last Edit: April 15, 2012, 06:37:49 AM by Alzael »

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"I drank what?!"- Socrates

"Dying for something when you know you'll be resurrected is not a sacrifice.It's a parlour trick."- an aquaintance

Philip of Macedon: (via messenger) If we enter Sparta, we will raze all your buildings and ravage all your women.Spartan Reply: If.

I noted mention of the OT prophecies in this threa, I'd like to point out briefly a very amusing flaw with the prophecies in the old testament. Isaiah 7:14 is a very famous and widely quoted prediction of Christ's coming.

Nobody really cares to read the rest of the prophecy, which happily states that if Jesus was born, then the entire world would become covered in thorns, Jesus would shave the head of the King of Assyria with a hired razor, that everyone from then on would only ever eat curds and honey, and that everyone would eat the flesh of their right hand.

None of that happened. Why would God need to hire a razor? Surely He'd just create one...

From this prophecy being unfulfilled, we can deduce that since the Bible's prophecies have not all been fulfilled, Jesus was NOT the son of God, and that his teachings were irrelevant. So this in effect cancels your entire argument Co.inkadink.

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"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."

You CoInk states he is open to evidence. Evidence seems to suggest he is absolutely completely and utterly not. His loop de loop magic arguments about Judas's death, only knowing standard apologist nonsense, and avoiding of tough questions all show this.

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An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

God punishes people collectively. Maybe it is primitive and uncivilized but that's the way it was done.

Primitive and confusing:

Exodus 20:5-6, I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

(Ezekiel 18:20) - "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."

Alzael, perhaps I'm missing something but when a typical theist comes here, they are confronted with several posts per thread.

The posts in the thread are walls of text.

I think, its unrealistic to expect any human with a life to reply to all those texts. Certainly, if I were in his place and right now I don't have a life, I'd only respond to a few of them.

I was just trying to respond to one of these posts, Velkyn's. A careful response would take far too much time.

Now to be far, perhaps walls of text begat walls of text; i.e., the OPs may not have been short either.

I think there is a real difference between 1) well thought out, carefully crafted, original, on-point "walls of text" that are just long responses, and 2) cut 'n paste walls 'o text from some apologist website, or even worse, 3) the unedited, rambling, grammatically incorrect, free-floating stream-of-unconsciousness walls of text that we get from some people. Like wordybird of a few days ago.

We just like to see people put some thought and time into their responses. Even if a reply is short, it should show evidence of a thought process. I try not to insult anyone by cutting and pasting from a website, or throwing up something long, rambling and barely related when they had written me something careful and original. (Obvious snark excepted.)

The problem is, we often get theists who really don't understand what they believe. (If they understood it, they might not believe it...) And they cannot admit that they just don't have a good answer to our questions. So they get short and snippy, or cut 'n paste from something they think sounds smart, or they go nuts on us with the rambling.

So, theists, if you can't think of a response, just say so. If you don't know something, just say so. It's okay not to know something. But if you b.s. us, or just disappear when you think you are losing the argument, we get pissed off.

so, Coink, why haven' t you healed anyone yet? I've asked this question repeatedly and you've avoided answering it. Now we get more lies about AiG having "good" arguments, and excuses on why you can't actually be bothered to answer questions. Well, coink, if it's now suddenly so hard to answer everyone's quetions, ask for a one-on-one discussion. If you wont' take that, then it is more than obvious that you have no intention of listening to anyone about how your claims fail, but only want ot use the forum to post links to already refuted Christians lies.

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"There is no use in arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus 1" - Pirates of Venus, ERB

I read Atheist authors regularly maybe you can check out these sites and look at it from another perspective.

Your posts are a bit long but you seem intellectually honest to me.

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"i had learn to focus i what i could do rather what i couldn't do", Rick Hansen when asked about getting a disabling spinal cord injury at 15. He continues to raise money for spinal cord research and inspire peoople to "make a difference". He doesnt preach any religion.

I think there is a real difference between 1) well thought out, carefully crafted, original, on-point "walls of text" that are just long responses

I agree that all walls of text are not made equally but my original point was, you can't answer 20 walls of text. Typically most of those walls say the same basic things.

Personally, with few exceptions, I often lose patience with long posts. Exceptions exist and the occasional "wall of text" is forgiveable. I sometimes make huge posts myself. Warning, this one will be long.

, 3) the unedited, rambling, grammatically incorrect, free-floating stream-of-unconsciousness walls of text that we get from some people. Like wordybird of a few days ago.

I don't subscribe to the heuristic that gramatical correctness shows clearer thought1. William Lane Craig uses perfect grammar and I believe so does Eric Hovind. People exist who suck and the mundane and focus on the complex.

Grammar correctness is a mechanical skill that probably uses a very different part of the brain that logical thought. It is memorized.

I do agree that coherence is important. This is related to how ones thoughts are organized.

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We just like to see people put some thought and time into their responses.

Sure. Theism inherently involves heuristics which are not particularly logical.

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Even if a reply is short, it should show evidence of a thought process.

I agree.

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The problem is, we often get theists who really don't understand what they believe.

I'm not sure whether this is true or not. Many of them may suck at explaining what they believe. I can only guess at what goes on in their heads.

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And they cannot admit that they just don't have a good answer to our questions.

"i had learn to focus i what i could do rather what i couldn't do", Rick Hansen when asked about getting a disabling spinal cord injury at 15. He continues to raise money for spinal cord research and inspire peoople to "make a difference". He doesnt preach any religion.